DNS Made Easy rallies after punishing DDoS attack

50Gbps of botnet-powered badness

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DNS Made Easy has restored services following a vicious denial of service that peaked at 50Gbps on Saturday.

The identity of the perpetrators and their motives remain unclear. One possible scenario is that hackers with a grudge against the site hired a botnet to swamp DNS Made Easy with useless traffic.

A blow-by-blow account of the attack can be found via DNS Made Easy's Twitter feed here.

The firm said it experienced 1.5 hours of actual downtime during the attack, which lasted eight hours. Carriers including Level3, GlobalCrossing, Tinet, Tata, and Deutsche Telekom assisted in blocking the attack, which due to its size flooded network backbones with junk.

DNS Made Easy specialises in global IP Anycast enterprise DNS services, so it isn't exactly a likely target for internet attacks, especially one of such ferocity. The SANS Institute's Internet Storm Centre is among the many security watchers keen to learn more about the attack.

The most potent DDoS attacks recorded in 2009 hit 49Gbps, according to a study by DDoS mitigation experts Arbor Networks. It adds that attacks in the range of 1-4 Gbps are more commonplace. ®